Although lives are said to be "unlikely to be at risk", a July 1999 article in the Financial Times says that "breakdowns and bottlenecks in production are likely to occur, although the scale cannot be predicted". The article quotes, John Eva, the head of Foxboro, saying that his company's Y2K work which involved more than 700 engineers "has uncovered bugs in 15 per cent of the equipment it has supplied". Foxboro installs and maintains process automation systems, which are "implanted" in 15,000 locations, including power stations, chemical plants oil-rigs and gold-mines. According to Mr Eva, "The world supply chain [linking industrial plant] is so complicated that a problem in one place could spark difficulties elsewhere. The world could be in for a major storm." [1]

Nuff said...........

-- reader (just@cheking.in), November 15, 1999

Answers

I have calibrated Foxboro equipment at a power plant. There are only 3-4 major names in process instrumentation and Foxboro is one. These are critical for Power Plants, Chemical Plants, Oil Refinery's, Drug Manufacturers, etc... etc...

This is a cradle to grave infestation at each level of the industrialized process.

Chemtrails, must stay focused on chemtrails because this post is touches EVERTHING!!!!!!!!

-- squid (Itsdark@down.here), November 15, 1999.

SQUID: This IS important! Please give us some details of anything you have experienced in your work capacity with this.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), November 15, 1999.

BINGO!!!

Now let old Decker, and the other air heads read it and lump it! Thankfully some one came across with at least one of the names (I could not, because of a so called yellow dog clause). But this in a "good" informational post... And they are definately there, and he is right about the estimated percentage of failures also..

It is the embeded systems which are the PROBLEM, they are going to be the "killers."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shakeyer now~~~~~~~~~~

-- Shakey (in_a_bunker@Forty.feet), November 15, 1999.

Just as an aside, production plants were one of the categories supposed to be especially vulnerable to New Years computer viruses predicted to erupt Jan. 1...

-- (normally@ease.notnow), November 16, 1999.

This is the eyes and ears of any process. The process can be combustion boiling water producing steam spinning turbines that runs the generator that feeds the playstation (tm). A power plant whether its nuclear or burning coal (or shredded tires) is controlled by all of these sensors throughout the plant. They tell the operators simple stuff like pressure and temperature. These instruments used to be usually convert the signal into an eletrical signal (4-20 mAmps) that feeds the PLC's. In older systems these would feed central control (computer) that would display the operation for control. We got smarter and the power of a PC moved out of the central control to the PLC (process logic controller). The control of the operation was now available locally because the central computer didn't need to do all the computing that is now performed by the PLC that simply feeds the central station the data. The central station can control the PLC remote or it can be operated "on station."

By making the PLC's "smart" with their own computer capable of performing computations they have become a computer without a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

But the instrumentation is how any fluid process is measured and controlled. If there is any problem with the instrumentation you can not safely operate any pressurized system (read power generator). Maybe the ones that are hosed aren't critical (nuc pun) but as an operator if you are without some of your instruments its like flying a plane without some of your instruments, Not me.

I tried to simplify this somewhat but find any old boiler operator or stationary engineer and ask if today's plants could be run on manual, the older they are the more they would ROTFLMAO.

-- squid (Itsdark@down.here), November 16, 1999.

Squid,

In addition to Foxboro, who would you consider the other major players in process cont4rol automation:

Allen Bradley?

Square D?

Siemens?

Honeywell?

Others???

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), November 16, 1999.

Ack. Ack. Breathe. Breathe. I worked in process control briefly and saw the grief that a failed PLC causes. But I was estimating that <1% of embedded systems were date reliant, and only about 10% of those being missed out. And even THAT scared me.

FIFTEEN PERCENT are reliant? Breathe. Breathe. Stock. Stock.

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), November 16, 1999.

Okay guys. You all seem to sling the lingo and I'm a self-professed ignoramous to the max when it comes to the embeddeds and such.

NOW...if you all are correct in your predictions, how long to you figure it'll take for things to get back to "normal" and why?

beej

-- beej (beej@ppbbs.com), November 16, 1999.

Here's a link to what appears to be a version of the oridinal article:

FT Process control article

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), November 16, 1999.

That was either a poorly written or poorly edited Financial Times story. The same quote was attributed to two different people. I'd put it in the suspect file until further clarification.

-- Buster Collins (BustrCollins@aol.com), November 16, 1999.